Next issue will be posted May 9, 2007. Read previous issues through our calendar of issues.

Editor’s note: Although this article is based on Indiana, the information has implications for our larger region. Check the USDA map reporting national spread at: http://www.sbrusa.net.

Although soybean planting has not gotten underway yet in Indiana, I have been getting questions about our risk for soybean rust this summer. We found soybean rust in a few counties in Indiana last October in some late-maturing fields, but this has no effect on our risk this year. Killing frosts eradicated these infections, including any that might have occurred on kudzu in Indiana. Each year, the rust must migrate anew into the Midwest from overwintering sites in the South.

The news from the southern United States is good. Cold weather a couple of weeks ago eradicated infections on kudzu in many sites in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Earlier this year, rust had been reported from 31 sites in the South, as far west as Mobile, Alabama. As of now, there are only eight counties with rust, all in Florida and south Georgia. Recent weather has been warm and dry in the southeastern United States, which is not conducive for rust development. Texas and Oklahoma have been wetter, but there are no reports of rust from there. In February, rust was found on volunteer soybean plants in south Texas. The field was subsequently tilled and planted to corn, which eliminated that source of rust.

Many soybean sentinel plots have been planted in southern states. Planting of sentinel plots is just getting started in Indiana. The sentinel plot system allows us to monitor the movement and development of rust during the growing season.

It is impossible to predict at this time whether rust will reach Indiana this summer. Our risk is probably low until such time as rust moves into Mississippi and Louisiana. The rust in Florida, Georgia and Alabama must work its way westward into the Mississippi Delta before it is in a position to be carried into Indiana by winds that move up the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys.

For those who use the Internet, up-to-date information about the status of rust can be found on the USDA PIPE Website, available at http://www.usda.gov/soybeanrust/. At the bottom of the homepage, under "Spotlights", click on the text to the right of the U.S. map (USDA Public Soybean Rust Web Site). This will bring up a U.S. map that shows where rust is (counties marked in red) and where people are scouting for rust, but have not found any (counties marked in green). From there, users can choose specific states for more detailed information. Alternatively, users can go directly to the site http://www.sbrusa.net.

Purdue also maintains a toll-free soybean rust hotline, which I update regularly during the growing season. The phone number is 866-458-RUST (7878).

New formulation of Kocide® 3000 available for 2007
Willie Kirk, Plant Pathology
Randall Ettema (DuPont)

DuPont Crop Protection has introduced a new formulation of Kocide 3000 for the 2007 season. This formulation has a finer, more consistent copper hydroxide grind than previous Kocide formulations and some competitive copper products. Kocide 3000 has more copper ions available to provide disease control at a lower rate. The environmental benefit is less metallic copper applied per acre.
Improvements made with Kocide® 3000 include:

• More available copper ions per pound metallic copper.
  
• Improved worker safety including signal word 'caution', no PPE eyewear required, no early entry eyewear required, and there is no 7 day eye flush container and oral warning.
  
• Improved handling characteristics including quicker dispersion, cleaner screens, low foaming.
  
• Lower use rates, 2/3x Kocide® 2000 use rate.
  
• Kocide® 2000 and Kocide® 3000 each received the OMRI approval to use on organically grown crops.
  

Kocide products have been used very successfully against many bacteria and diseases on fruit and vegetables. This preventative copper fungicide has also demonstrated very good activity against Septoria and powdery mildew in wheat to protect early plant health.

The organic marketplace is growing rapidly, outpacing the availability of high quality, science-based information for farmers and agricultural professionals. eXtension is a new national, web-based, information source for Land Grant University (LGU) faculty and Extension agents to consolidate research findings and outreach materials. Within the framework of eXtension, eOrganic is being developed as the new organic agriculture Extension Service website to provide accurate and up-to-date information for organic farmers, conventional farmers, researchers, and agricultural professionals.

The eOrganic effort is being led by researchers, Extension agents, and educators from Oregon State, Penn State, North Carolina State, Ohio State, Clemson, and the Universities of Illinois, Minnesota, and Vermont, in cooperation with ATTRA, OFRF, Rodale, and the National Ag Library. The eOrganic site will be launched in the fall of 2007, featuring in-depth content in three major areas of organic agriculture: certification; dairy production and marketing; and vegetable production and marketing.

The eOrganic Community of Practice (i.e. leadership team) is comprised of approximately 100 people representing diverse organic production regions and content areas. They include campus and county extension faculty and research and teaching faculty recognized for their expertise in organic and sustainable agriculture. In addition, the CoP includes experienced organic farmers, certification experts, and agricultural professionals.

The vision and framework for eOrganic is being developed and evaluated in partnership with key organic agriculture information providers such as ATTRA, The New Farm, OrganicAgInfo and the National Ag Library. eOrganic will initially offer searchable content consisting of brief articles; nationally compiled Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs); an interactive Ask-the-Expert tool; regionally-specific case studies; certification resources and decision tools; and a portal to in-depth information available from other sources, including partner sites (OrganicAgInfo, ATTRA, SARE) and local and regional Land Grant University and Cooperative Extension resources.

eOrganic will provide timely information on critical issues such as systems-level soil and pest management, animal health, grazing, feed supplements, community food systems, and international certification requirements. eOrganic will be evaluated from the beginning to the end of the project by organic farmers, conventional farmers, and agricultural professionals to develop the highest quality content and most effective delivery systems for these user groups.

To learn more about eXtension, and to see an example of an eXtension website, please go to http://www.extension.org/.

Organic growers know that agriculture is not about conquering the environment; it’s about understanding the interactions that occur within an ecosystem and then using that knowledge to manage a farm. Michigan State University has published a new publication about natural systems and how they affect your management practices: “Ecologically Based Farming Systems,” Michigan State University Extension bulletin number E-2983.
(View order form.)

This publication looks at such topics as community-based food systems, agricultural landscapes and integrated pest management. Chapters focus on holistic approaches for field crops, potatoes, tart cherries and managed intensive grazing and takes an in-depth look at organic production on two Michigan organic operations. Learn how it is possible to support farm productivity while benefiting the environment and the community.

South Central Indiana – Dale Rhoads
Three weeks ago the temperatures were in the low 80s and everything bloomed. It was another of those compressed springtimes when different native and non-native plants that should bloom over a month are all in bloom at once. Then it got cold with nighttime temperatures in the low 20s, which brought everything to a standstill. Amazingly only the Asian pears and plums got hit with the cold. Peach blooms appear to have survived, apples are going to set a lot of fruit, sweet cherries got hit some and pie cherries look to be fine, especially a later blooming variety that is the latest blooming fruit tree we have on the place.

At the same time when it was cold, it was also wet. I got behind in tilling. Essentially this cold and somewhat wet snap has us running about two to three weeks behind typical years. I have spent a lot of time the last several days turning dirt. It rained last night to slow that down, but I have just about got caught up. I will be finishing or staying caught up with tilling as weather allows.

We have just started weekly plantings of salad greens outside. If weather holds steady with temperatures in 70s during the day and upper 40s at night, we will not use covers, otherwise we will put covers on. Also we will watch the growth—lettuces in our experience grow best or fastest with temperatures of 90-60, which is about what our row covers produce in 70-50 outside ranges. Sounds like I have just talked myself into the row covers.

We are transplanting lettuce and kale right now. We have played around the past several years with mulching many crops and trying rotted sawdust and straw. The rotted sawdust works better, is cheaper but more costly to apply as it is applied around the plants after transplanting. We are using a hand transplanting device this year that is working well to speed up transplanting and allows us to spread sawdust mulch before transplanting, speeding that up too. Typically in years past we did not mulch lettuce, but would wheel hoe and hoe. Last year I put a 6-inch circle of rotted sawdust around each lettuce transplant that greatly reduced weeding close to the plants and did not excessively dirty up lettuce at harvest. This year we are spreading 2 inches of rotted sawdust over the entire area planning to eliminate all weeding on the lettuce. It is still a bit early for outside basil, but we will start putting basil in the greenhouses.

Over the next two weeks we will be cleaning out overwintered spinach from greenhouses to plant tomatoes, which is two to three weeks late for us due to cold weather. We will also transplant basil in the greenhouse. We will keep up with tilling and ground prep, transplant kale and lettuce as slow starting transplants are getting up to size. We run two heat cables in one of the greenhouses to help jump start transplants. One of them failed this year; that and the severe cool down has slowed transplant growth, too.

We should be starting harvest of salad greens next week. This is a mixture of overwintered spinach in the greenhouse, new salad greens planted this year in the greenhouse and outside beds of salad greens that have been under a heavy row cover. I will be keeping up with fruit tree sprays.

West Central Indiana – Kevin Cooley
An early warm spell, followed by lengthy cold and windy conditions, delayed early plantings and made first early row-covered crops impossible due to the sustained high winds. We use high tunnels to get products to market by the end of April and try to use row covers to transition us until field crops are ready. This year there will be a gap in our availability due to the crazy weather cycle.

This week we have been transplanting brassicas, lettuce and onion crops. We also have our first planting of sweet corn and green beans in the ground. We planted our second planting of greens outside, as well as the second planting of potatoes and peas. This week we have been harvesting greens from the high tunnels that we market through our on-line store. Between field work and tunnel work we have been trying to get prepared for the start of the Farmer’s Markets next week.

In the next two weeks we plan to work on construction of a small greenhouse to give space for the overcrowded transplant area. Crowding has occurred due to the weather, which has caused plants that should be outside to still be inside. We will also be doing field work for upcoming plantings of melons and greens (weather permitting).

Illinois
Southwest Central Illinois—Floyd Johnson
Our weather has been cold and wet. After an early warm spell, we had a cold snap and it is now just warming up again. A lot of conventional corn planters have been rolling over the weekend.

Currently we are breaking ground open to facilitate drying; I like to use an Aer-Way without the harrow to do this. I have been over the oat ground and the wet spots on manure spreading ground. After the oat ground had dried some, I was able to get over it with the disk yesterday. Now I am wondering how quickly to get back over it to get the oats in as it is late, but hopefully it will keep weeds from growing back. We are supposed to be spreading manure today for corn.

In the next two weeks I hope to get oats planted and corn ground worked and possibly corn planted. If possible, I will start preparing ground for soybeans.

Farm location
I don’t think I described where my farm is located. I am about 35 miles south of Springfield, Illinois. I am in between the flat black to the north and the rolling timber ground to the south.

West Central Illinois—Anne Patterson
It sure has been one of craziest starts to the season. I started getting things ready in my market garden in March, like removing some of the wire hoops, plastic and sandbags which covered my overwintered spinach. I planted spring transplants and planted bulls blood beets and mesclun in the field. The seed potatoes were bought. And then April arrived with a vengeance. The temperatures were in the mid 70s April 2-3 and I awoke to a 35 mph wind and 25 degrees on April 4. Even the hardy kale wintered over in the field was ruined, along with mesclun, beets and blooming pear trees. I had set aside all my plastic in the aisles and it was a difficult task covering all the spinach with the brisk wind.
 
If ever there was a time I was glad I was running behind, it was that morning. If I had been timely with everything, I surely would have lost much more with the next ten days of very cold rain, wind and snow showers.

I’ve been playing catch up the past six days. It is just now dry enough to skim plow in some areas. I’ve had to change my field plans due to the weather conditions.

I have been able to plant fruit trees, blueberries, head lettuce, carrots, potatoes, onion plants, beets, spinach, herbs, Asian greens and arugula (I will need to cover the greens and arugula with floating row cover to prevent flea beetle damage). All hoops, plastic and sand bags are out of the field. This was a big job, which comes at the same time one should be doing spring planting. The good thing with the low hoop method in the field is that it worked. The bad thing is the initial labor (cutting hoops and filling sandbags and actually getting it done) and cost of materials. I have been able to sell spinach for the past month; however, I lost a tremendous amount of crop of spinach, turnips, Asian greens and mesclun to voles that were having a party under my low hoops during the coldest part of the winter. Now I have this problem to deal with for spring crops. Plus the chickweed went rampant under the plastic/hoops.

I’m trying to get cabbage and broccoli transplants in with more trees planted before rain predicted tonight. I’m weeding and picking asparagus at the same time. This is not good! I think I’m passing on planting peas for the season as I’m running out of time.

Over the next two weeks I plan to plant spring cover crop, set out leeks transplants, plant more flowers and head lettuce and put early tomato plants in hoophouse. I’m very late in potting up other tomatoes; however, I never put them out in the field until the third week of May. I had a cold snap take out many two years ago, so I’m very cautious. I am finishing up this next week with the last of my spinach, which was wintered over. This provided five weeks of spinach to sell. However, due to bad weather, there will now be a gap until spring planted greens, spinach, lettuce, etc. are ready to sell. I will try to get ahead of the weeds! I need to find a good part-time employee to replace the great one leaving for a 40+ hour/week college internship with a seed company. I will try to find out why my mass email to customers isn’t working consistently. I will plant snap beans, corn and successive planting of romaine lettuce along with summer transplants of melons.

Questions
Does mulching with straw bring in chickweed? Why do I have so much more chickweed now than in the past years? Are warmer winters and low hoops just bringing it out more?

Strip-by-strip as needed, we are planting and transplanting. Our soil has good tilth so we are not doing any major tillage this spring. We spaded (using our Falk spader) last spring and last fall, and we are finding that this spring the soil is soft and workable without any tillage except a scarf pass with a rototiller to prepare the seed bed.

We have seeded peas, potatoes, beets, turnips, and carrots into the field. We are transplanting broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, leeks, and onions. In the greenhouse we are tending to our tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, celery, celeriac, pac choi, lettuce, cucumbers and summer squash.

In the next two weeks we will be doing more planting, transplanting, and mulching of onions and leeks.   

Iowa
Northwest Iowa – Paul Mugge
The weather was very cold until a week ago or so. We had a couple of good days last week after it warmed up, until it rained last Saturday night (April 21) and Sunday. The flax that I was able to no-till 10 days ago is up an inch or so and looks good. The rest of the flax was drilled last Wednesday because it had to be tilled first. The fall triticale is about 3 inches tall and greening up nicely—it looks good. I was planning to frost-seed some clover and alfalfa into the fall triticale, but that didn’t work. We went from a foot of snow to a foot of mud with nothing in between. I finally broadcast it on March 25 and got some rain and snow on it. I thought the conditions would be good, however, I can’t find a single plant as of yet, so I’m not too optimistic.

Currently my neighbors are all planting corn. I have the small grains in and I got the triticale cover crop drilled on my ridges that will go to soybeans later. I hauled enough manure to get by for another week and cleaned out a hoop hog house and piled it for compost. I also disked the ground that was red clover cover crop after last year’s small grains that will go to corn this year. Most of the clover overwintered. I’m sure it will continue to grow after the recent rain, but at least I have kept it from getting soddy and should stimulate a flush of weeds to get with the next pass.

I have mountains of compost to spread, liquid manure to haul, and another hoop house to clean over the next two weeks. I will need to field cultivate the rest of the ground going to corn and also the second pass on the ground that has been disked. I won’t plant corn for a couple of weeks yet. I want to get a couple of flushes of weeds, let the soil warm up, and let my neighbor’s GMO corn get a good head start.

Michigan
Southeast Michigan – Beverly Ruesink
It has been sunny and windy since Wednesday, April 18. Before that it was rainy and quite cold. Last year we had already gotten into the field by April 4, this year we started on April 18.

Currently we have been tilling fields in preparation for planting. Some are just being lightly tilled since they were disked in the fall, some are being plowed to incorporate leftover plant residue from late fall crops. Since April 18, we’ve been planting, planting, planting. We’ve put in onions, potatoes, lettuce, chard, fava beans, peas, brassicas, etc. We have also been harvesting and selling greens (spinach, arugula and lettuce) from our hoophouse since April 7. We are continuing to seed in the greenhouse and transplant up plants from seedling trays.

During the next two weeks we plan to continue planting in the field and work in the greenhouse on seeding. There will be some tillage on the crops that are already in the field. The Adrian Farmers Market starts on Saturday, May 5.

Question
Does anyone have a good organic method for combating quack grass?

East Michigan – John Simmons
The persistently cool, wet weather through most of April has kept soils from drying. The temperatures have warmed and rains have held off the past week, and fields are now drying. We plan to start field preparation for oats/barley planting today (Tuesday, April 24). Currently we are cleaning and shipping seed, and completing final preparation of machinery (grease, adjust, etc.). In the next two weeks we plan to prep, plant and tend oats, barley and possibly flax. We also will prep and plant oat cover on sunflower stubble; prep fields for corn, sunflower and soybean planting, and place cattle on pasture.

Question
Any news of aphids?

South Central Michigan – Anthony Cinzori
It has been warm and dry the past week, so irrigation was needed on newly planted onions, cabbage and peas. Late March and early April were very cold with snow, wind and temperatures in the 20s. This hurt early over-winter greens and some greens in unheated greenhouses that were growing rapidly from the warmer temperatures. Last week we were busy tilling ground and transplanting cole crops, potatoes and onions. Also shipping plants from the greenhouse. In the next two weeks we will be tilling ground to get fields ready for early zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes.

Minnesota
Western Minnesota—Carmen Fernholz
The spring planting season has been slow in coming in western Minnesota so far. There were some warm days in late March but since then it has been cloudy, cool and wet, with two-plus inches of rain just this past weekend. Weather predictions for the rest of this week look to be more favorable for field work.

Because of the delayed arrival of spring the only farming activities so far have been picking up seed and getting a few acres ready for small grains to be seeded. I have a new tractor with auto steer and GPS capabilities so I have been spending some time learning that as much as possible.

By the end of the week I hope to be planting the dried field peas, barley, oats and flax, all of which are underseeded with a legume, including the dried field peas. Then I hope to do the first pass of a split tillage pass on the corn and soybean ground to get the first flush of weeds going before final tillage and planting in mid to late May.